


i think the allosaurus broke out again

by aroberuka



Category: Zoo Tycoon Series (Video Game)
Genre: Bad Puns, Dubious Dinosaur Care tbh, Gameplay Elements Taken Seriously, Gen, Worldbuilding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-08
Updated: 2018-09-08
Packaged: 2019-07-08 05:49:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,066
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15924164
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aroberuka/pseuds/aroberuka
Summary: or: how Larissa learned to stop worrying and finish her lunch.





	i think the allosaurus broke out again

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Rosencrantz](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rosencrantz/gifts).



The zoo opened its doors in late January, with nothing but a couple saber-toothed cats and a lot of hope. Larissa remembered seeing it on the news, remembered the headlines about _A miracle of science!_ and _(Pre)History in the making!_ and, because you could always find people ready to cash in on a miracle: _Miracle zoo to open in Bumfuck, Nowhere_ . Mostly she remembered thinking _hasn’t there been, like, a bajillion movies about why this is a terrible idea?_

“I think it’s pretty cool,” Halley had told her over lunch. “And besides, a place like that has _got_ to be hiring, and god knows the town could use that.”

Larissa had made a quip about hiring locally grown dinosaur food, and then she’d gone home to find she’d been laid out from her job at Max Market’s Max Market, and the rest was history because Halley was right: no-one else was hiring in Bumfuck, Nowhere. $300 a month to dangle herself in front of actual live breathing dinosaurs and pray not to die seemed like a pretty raw deal to her, but it was better than nothing at all, and with any luck maybe she’d get to see a T-Rex before she died, possibly _right_ before she died.

 

~*~

 

Larissa had expected to find the place crawling with staff—scientists, other maintenance workers, a couple security guys maybe, please, pretty please, good god, there’s dinosaurs ( _megafauna_ , the scientists would later tell her, over, and over, again) in there. Instead the bored-looking twentysomething flipping through a magazine at the entrance booth waved her through into a mostly empty park. A short cement path led her to a couple vending machines and the world’s smallest archeological dig (“kids _dig_ it,” apparently), where she found a man in a lab coat who introduced himself as “School, I mean Dr. School, Damien I mean, Damien School, oh god please shoot me now”.

Dr. Damien School was young, passionate, and way too nonchalant about his job not to be at least a little bit freaked out on the inside. He was also not, technically speaking, a doctor quite yet, which explained why he was raking dinosaur ( _megafauna_ , come on, we’ve been through this before) poo in Bumfuck, Nowhere instead of working in a lab Literally Anywhere Else.

He showed her around as he explained what would be expected of her (“simple, really, we’re not that big yet, just empty the trash cans four times a day and of course make sure the exhibit fences are, you know, keeping the exhibits _in_ , but I mean that shouldn’t be an issue at all haha”). Not that there was much to show in the first place, just a short, snowy path through the Ice Age area. On their right, macrauchenias and giant sloths, on their left, the now infamous saber-toothed cats, all perfectly hidden for now. Fun.

“And here’s Duchess,” Damien announced suddenly, looking behind Larissa with a proud smile she immediately recognized from every pet owner she’d ever known.

“Here’s what now,” she said, and then she turned around and had to stop breathing for a sec, because _holy balls_.

It was the size, was the thing. She hadn’t been ready for the size, even though of course she’d known it would be big, it was right there in the goddamn name. But there was big, and then there was Big, and this? This was Big. This was bigger than her brain wanted to handle. This was the kind of big that twisted her insides into a tight knot and made her want to find a hole to hole into until the danger was gone.

It was terrifying, and it was magnificent.

The saber-toothed cat slowly prowled the length of the fence, ears perked up, muscles rippling beneath its fur, keeping an eye on them the whole time, then disappeared behind a rock, giving Larissa room to breathe again.

“Duchess. Right.”

“Yup,” said Damien cheerfully, and then: “Hey, wanna see them eat?”

 

~*~

 

“I don’t know how you can just _walk_ in there,” Larissa admitted half an hour later, heart filled with a newfound, unexpected respect for scientists everywhere.

“It’s not so bad. I mean, sure, it’s dangerous, but it’s not actually _more_ dangerous than working with any other animal.”

“Oh, so you _are_ trained to work with animals?”

“Sure,” said Damien, not mentioning his training mostly came from a couple internet searches and lots of hands-on experience over the past month-and-a-half. She’d find out soon enough anyway.

 

~*~

 

Working in the Ice Age area, Larissa quickly learned, was actually pretty chill once you got past the overwhelming fact that you were working around actual live breathing dinosaurs ( _mega_ —you’re doing this on purpose, aren’t you?). It helped that her job so far mostly consisted of making sure the vending machines stayed full and the trash cans empty.

Spring brought about an endless stream of construction workers. The entire southern side disappeared behind red and white scaffolding, and pretty soon Larissa’s otherwise peaceful days were filled with banging and clanging and the occasional whirring.

“We’ve started work on the Jurassic area,” was Damien’s explanation, though Larissa knew by then he had very little to do with it. “That means actual, for real dinosaurs.”

“Oh, so we’re literally doing Jurassic Park then, cool, cool cool cool cool that sounds like a good idea.”

“Don’t. Don’t mention that movie here. Please.”

That had, apparently, become a bit of a superstition around the lab, in the same way theater folks wouldn’t talk about Macbeth, and Damien had carried it with him all the way here. Larissa supposed it made sense. Just because life imitates fiction doesn’t mean it wants its nose rubbed in it.

In any case, the first actual, for real dinosaurs (“Camptosauri, Caudipterixes and Allosauri.” “Oh my.”) arrived in April, along with a new scientist, bringing up the on-site staff to an astonishing three, unless you really wanted to include the bored-looking twentysomething who never left their booth.

Unlike Damien, Zara actually looked like she had experience, and that experience was in dinosaur wrestling, which made her a very welcome addition as far as Larissa was concerned.

“It’s alright,” she said with an unshakeable confidence that was maybe a bit premature, given that the actual, for real dinosaurs hadn’t even hatched yet, “I know what I’m doing.”

 

~*~

 

“It won’t eat anything and I don’t know whyyyy.”

“There, there,” said Larissa, patting her back, which, alright, not helpful, but she had twice as much zoo to work with and management still refused to hire anyone else, which left her with surprisingly little energy to expend on people who earned three times her salary.

Besides, what the hell did she know about Allosauruses (ri, whichever)?

“Maybe it wants live prey?” she tried anyway. “That’s a thing right? I feel like that’s a thing.”

“Why would it want live prey it’s an unnatural lab-grown monster it doesn’t have natural instincts?”

“Oh. Really?”

“ _God_ I hope so,” said Zara.

 

~*~

 

“It keeps! Trashing its own exhibit! It won’t eat and it keeps breaking its home and then it throws a tantrum because it’s hungry and its home is broken what is _wrong_ with that thing, who did this?!”

“I’m pretty sure you did,” said Larissa.

“Yeah, we really kinda did,” added Damien.

“I don’t get it. The other one is fine. The other one is lovely. They’re _all_ doing fine it’s just That One Asshole!”

Zara slid forward, forehead thunking against the table.

“It’s going to die,” she said, her voice muffled. “It’s going to die or it’s going to snap and eat me and it’ll be my fault.”

“There, there,” said Larissa, just in case.

 

~*~

 

“I think it’s testing the fence. Do you think it’s testing the fence? It really looks like it’s testing the fence,” said Larissa.

She and Damien had met by the Camptosauruses, and were now watching the Allosaurus Exhibit. That One Asshole kept headbutting the fence, even though he got zapped every time. Not three steps away Zara was raking up poo. She was _whistling_. Larissa still didn’t know she could be so calm while in the exhibit and so nervous out of it. It felt—backwards.

“It is, it’s testing the fence.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” said Damien, but his heart wasn’t in it.

 

~*~

 

The disaster was heralded by a loud crashing sound, quickly followed by loads of panicked screams.

Larissa, who’d been happily enjoying the spring breeze, and also more importantly a large Bronto Burger (“Not with real Brontos”), on her favourite bench by the Lepospondyl House, jumped about three feet into the air and landed on her feet, ready to bolt, preferably _away_ from the screaming; she only took a couple steps before running into Damien, who’d had the exact opposite idea.

“Larissa! Good!! Help!!!”

And really, what the hell was there to do except follow him into the Jurassic area, where a bloody, bloody death was probably waiting for them.

 

~*~

 

They did not find a bloody, bloody death.

But they did find Zara waiting for them by the Allosaurus Exhibit, or rather what was left of it. Her head was in her hands, but Larissa couldn’t help but notice she looked more frustrated than scared, which didn’t bode well for their chances of getting out of dodge and letting other, better-trained people handle the situation.

“It just. Bust through,” Zara explained, helpless. “The electricity was down!”

“Oh, no no no no no you are _not_ making this my fault!”

“I’m not! I'm just saying, the electricity was down! Right where Squatt likes to play with the fence!”

“Electricity can’t be down in just one bit of the fence!" said Larissa, instinctively writing off everything else Zara was wrong about as a lost cause. "That’s not how conductivity works!”

“Well it _was_!”

Following Zara's lead, the three of them followed the trail of broken fences, trampled flower beds and crushed dreams all the way through the Jurassic area, past the (...) and (...) and (...) and (...) who were all so much less trouble than That One Asshole, until they saw a vague, dinosaur-shaped silhouette off in the distance, right by the Apatosaurus Exhibit, and then Larissa had to stop walking, because no, wait, what the fuck were they thinking, what the fuck was _she_ thinking, this was the _exact opposite_ of a good idea.

"Hold on," she said.

“Yeah, shouldn’t we have, like. A plan?” asked Damien, as if that was the problem here.

From somewhere up ahead came a blood-curdling growl. Larissa took a step back.

“... Let’s just run, how’s that for a plan?”

“We can’t just leave! What if it gets hurt?”

“What if _it_ gets hurt?!”

“Unnatural lab-grown monster, Larissa! It can’t survive on its own! It’s not _meant_ to! In fact it’s probably really scared right now!”

“Which is exactly why we should leave it alone! The dinosaur recovery team can take care of this!”

“We don’t _have_ a dinosaur recovery team!”

“We will after today,” deadpanned Damien.

Another growl, lower, slower. Zara frowned.

“Wait,” she said, and then gave Larissa a heart attack by walking away from them and towards the big scary dinosaur.

When no death scream reached them, Damien and Larissa started inching their way forward as well.

Allosaurus #2, aka Squatt, aka That One Asshole, was snoring peacefully amidst the begonias, curled around the Bronto Burger stand like a dog around a teddy bear.

“I should have known,” said Zara with way too much tenderness. “It always naps right after lunch.”

Slowly, but surely, Larissa felt her heart go back to normal, and with her impending doom no longer impending went back to more practical matters.

“Okay. How do we move it back?”

 

~*~

 

“Hey, do you think management will agree we need more than one of me now?” Larissa asked two days later, cautiously optimistic.

 

~*~

 

They did not.

But they did agree to upgrade the fence to a newer model after the fourth time Squatt broke through. Mostly because it had finally found the parking lot, and there were only so many settlements checks management was willing to write before calling it a day.

 

~*~

 

“Sooo did you hear about the new Cretaceous expansion?”

“Oh, yeah, what’s up with that?”

“We’ll be getting, well, T-rexes and velociraptors. Like. You know. _You know_.”

“Ehhhhhh, can’t be worse than the Allosauruses,” said Larissa, and immediately cursed herself for these famous last words.

**Author's Note:**

> Zoo Tycoon was one of the first video games I played, and it was a blast to get back into it for this fic xD I learned two things in the process: 1)I may have a slight tendency to forget to hire new staff, and 2)Allosaurus is the true Jurassic terror.
> 
> I hope you enjoyed!


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